Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

Team #10 BYUC
July 18, 2007

Team #10 on my list is BYUC, the DARPA Urban Challenge team from Brigham Young University, and their car, "Ynot".   

This is a very pouplar project on campus, so there is no shortage of volunteers.  Many of the students are taking advantage of the fact that working on the BYUC can be counted as their senior design project.  There is also of course the "cool" factor of being associated with such an important project. There are 10 team members in the Sensor Group, 10 team members in the Vehicle Control Group, 14 in the Artificial Intelligence Group, Three faculty members and assorted other team members - so obviously the team picture just hints at the number of people working to make Ynot work.



BYUC's vehicle, Ynot, is a 2004 Chrysler Town & Country minivan.  The Kairos Autonomi drive-by-wire system that Ynot is outfitted with allows the minivan to be controlled either by computer or manually from the driver’s seat.    In case of a malfunction during testing there is always a person behind the wheel. 

The data from the sensors which include mono- and stereo-vision cameras, LIDAR, and RADAR require
several CPUs to process the data then make intelligent decisions about what the vehicle should do next.

Preparing for the DARPA 2007 Urban Challenge is happening just as Brigham Young University is expanding its interest and research in the field of unmanned vehicles. BYU is already known for its research in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and their participation in the Urban Challenge should attract a lot of attention.

Posted by Paul Grayson on July 18, 2007 | Comments (0)